Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Joseph Sciambra returns as an apostle

Jesus says "stop this shit"

Wednesday, ex-gay douche-bag Joseph Sciambra gave an extensive interview to the conservative National Catholic Register. The piece is titled “Return From the Abyss of Homosexual Pornography” Brian Tashman once referred to Sciambra as the “ex-Nazi-witch-Satanist-porn-star who authored the salacious memoir ‘Swallowed by Satan.’” Apparently we can now call Sciambra an “apostle.” According to NCR “Joseph Sciambra dedicates his apostolate to evangelizing same-sex-attracted men and women.”
I don't want to re-quote the entire piece but:

After several years of being out of the “gay” lifestyle, healed of those old attractions to the same sex, I could finally begin to mourn, though they were never completely gone from my thoughts, for all those whom I had known and who had died so young and so needlessly. To honor the forgotten victims of AIDS, I decided to head back to San Francisco. … Inspired by the patron saint of San Francisco, I simply took to the streets and met people where they were, in their everyday lives, going about their everyday business.

If he wants to make a difference he can hand out free condoms but that's against the rules. Pissing people off, however, is not a proscribed activity.

Along those lines:

In San Francisco, particularly during the summer months, the “gay” community puts on a series of parades, free concerts and street festivals. … I attend, with big signs and wearing T-shirts printed front and back with my two website addresses … I have rebuked the word “gay” in my own life, as a false label and identifier placed upon me by an all-too-accepting culture …

What angered me the most:

Most often, a parent will write to me, generally heartbroken, that his or her child has cut him or her off because he or she refused to not only accept, but celebrate the “coming out” and the relationships. On the part of the “gay” child, words are exchanged, and things get cruel and ugly.

I try to remind these parents that their children have been hurt; and they are human, and they are scared. In being “gay,” they see their only route to happiness. Anyone who stands against this, including you and me, are considered an enemy. But when the “gay” lie is finally revealed, they will crawl out of that life, utterly broken and brutalized; they will need love, compassion and hope; they will turn to you.

What really hurts gay people is when family rejects them because of their sexual orientation. They are not broken. The parents who reject them are the people who are broken since it is they who are wed to the preposterous notion that their rejection will somehow alter their child's sexual orientation. If, indeed (and I am not convinced) that parents write to Sciambra then they are vulnerable people who are putting themselves at the hands of a gay anti-gay predator.

Conservative Catholics cannot accept the fact that parenting has nothing to do with the sexual orientation of children. These parents did nothing wrong until they rejected their sons and daughters. Sciambra's currency is shame.

I will say it again. The purpose of religion is to provide a path to an afterlife. Follow the rules and, when you die, you are off to paradise. The problem with all of that is that their god did not write the rules. Men are responsible for their authorship and men can be very arbitrary. For example, around 47 CE Paul changed some of the rules to make it easier for him to proselytize Gentiles in the near east. One of the rules that Paul left in place supposedly prohibits gay sex. In their book that is a couple of paragraphs from the commandment to murder insolent children.

Therefore, the most devout literalists are forced into selective observation. Even then at the Second Temple the priests (rabbis) found conflicting scrolls. Some of the rules were literally arrived at by the consensus of a committee two millennia ago.

Estranging children in an attempt to follow what some claim are the rules makes no sense whatsoever. Even the most devoutly programmed parent should have the common sense to hit the pause button when it comes to their kids.